Among students at 28 top U.S. universities, the representation of black students of first- and second-generation immigrant origin (27 percent) was about twice their representation in the national population of blacks their age (13 percent). Within the Ivy League, immigrant-origin students made up 41 percent of black freshmen.

The affirmative action movement borne out of the sixties was supposed to remedy past racial discrimination. When President Kennedy issued an Executive Order in 1961 that created the EEOC, the c0mmission was to oversee the employment practices of private industry. The concept spread beyond employment under President Johnson (who coined the phrase). By making whites (and Asians) pay for the putative sins of their fathers, a racial equality was to be achieved.

Of course, the reality of human biodiversity, specifically as it relates to the seeminglytenacious black-white IQ gap, has frustrated that hope. While Ashkenazi Jews (average IQ range of 107-115) excelled at an accelerated pace immediately upon the removal of legal and social discrimination substantivally beginning in the mid-19th Century, and Koreans (IQ 105-108), who underwent a vicious four decades of Japanese rule (and have been sandwiched between a China that tried to keep them on a cultural leash at least as far back as the Three Kingdoms period and a Japan that made a few sporadic campaigns of conquest in the 1590s), are more successful than Joe Average, black Americans (IQ 85-90) haven't fared so well.

For various reasons, universities are going after immigrants. This is especially true at elite schools, where first- or second-generation blacks comprise 41% of the black student body--a relative representation more than four-and-a-half times what would be expected by population size alone. Black immigrants are relatively free from the noxious hip-hop culture (the article quotes a Harvard black leader complaining about how black immigrants try to isolate themselves from native blacks), usually must do well to stay in-country, and are often the cream of the crop:

In terms of student background, [the study] found few differences, noting only that far more black immigrant students had fathers with college or advanced degrees than did other black students.

At least we appear to be getting something better than the native black norm.

In addition to the obstacle of cultural differences and regression toward the mean, a preference for foreign-born racial "minorities" (once they enter the US, anyway) is problematic. Just as schools prefer hard-working and obsequious blacks, so does industry. But the children's children of these exotic black diamonds are growing up under the influences of the American black community. They're going to expect more while being able to achieve less. So the need to pull ever-greater numbers of black immigrants to have ample black talent is self-perpetuating.

Last month, a Harvard Black Students Association message board asked, “When we use the term ’black community,’ who is included in this description?” A lively debate ensued, with some posters complaining that African students were getting an admissions boost without having faced the historical suffering of U.S. blacks.

A migrant from Zimbabwe or Swaziland might disagree. With an estimated purchasing power parity of $852.8 billion in 2006, the aggregate wealth of 39 million black Americans outstrips that of any sub-Saharan African country, including the continent's wealthiest, South Africa, which is nearly 10% European and has a larger total population. The life expectancy of black Americans, which is over 70 years, is more than a decade beyond the closest sub-Saharan African nation of Ghana, at 59 years. The descendants of inbondaged Africans brought to North America seem more fortunate than the descendants of their brethren left behind on the Dark Continent in a number of ways.

The mixed feelings among blacks dealt with in the AP article illustrates how grassroots minority groups concerned about benefits being bestowed upon competiting immigrants at the expense of themselves conflict with national figureheads and organizations that benefit from numerical increases even if they mean less per capita in special privileges. Expanding the eligibility pool for special treatment not only drains a country on the national level, it also shrinks the size of benefits for natives on the receiving end.